Posts tagged ‘Android’

Are you into playing Oscars pool or racking up on your Oscars trivia or watching the red carpet? Here are some apps you will find handy!

1. Award Hero: Oscars Edition (Free) (iTunes) – Check out this free App to create your own Oscars pool and compete against friends. The only part that I don’t like is that you can only do it via your Facebook account. This App also has historical information on previous Oscar awards and winners.

2. Oscars App (Free) (iTunes) – is the official App brought to you by ABC. It has a number of backstage streams and you can choose one of the 6 cameras and zoom in. The Oscars App has more cameras than any other media outlet. You can also view movie trailers and list of nominated movies.

3. E! Live from the Red Carpet (Free) (iTunes, Android) – E! will bring you all the red carpet scoop to your phone. Get insider info on awards, celebrity interviews, complete video coverage of the event and most importantly all the fashion buzz!

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60Beat – GamePad for your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch is the new kid in the block. It brings a full-sized game pad designed for iOS devices and it connects via headphone jack. Being an ardent gamer myself, I like the classic touch to the new generation of gaming devices. However, I would rather not shell out $50 for 60Beat if instead I could use my PS3 gamepad to do the same task!

Android users have an advantage. They can connect their Wii remotes with their Android devices using BlueTooth and the XBox 360 controller wirelessly with an additional device connected to the Android USB port.

The gamepad though isn’t the future of gaming, in my opinion, Kinect technology is! How would you like to be entertained? 😛

HP recently announced that it will be open sourcing its mobile operating system, Web OS, which it purchased from Palm last year. Earlier the company had announced that it would spin off the PC business and exit the smart phone and tablet business. Then HP reversed its decision on PC business. After the runaway fire sale success and the new CEO’s decision to keep the PC business, there has been a lot of speculation about HP’s plans with Web OS. In my opinion, HP is headed in the right direction by making Web OS an open source software (wonder if this was due to lack of buyers).

Web OS may now have new enhancements and new versions in the future (This is good news for those that got the HP TouchPad in the fire sale). Because of the “open source”ing Web OS may also effectively compete with Google’s Android OS, on which most of the tablet hardware manufacturers rely on.

HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, also confirmed that HP will not enter the smart phone market but the company is planning to use Web OS in its future tablet products.

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The biggest player in the handset industry, Nokia has now officially entered the smart phone battle with the release of its new phones – Nokia Lumia 800 & 710. Nokia has kicked its old MeeGo OS and Symbian OS to build phones with the new Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS.

The spec on Lumia 800 is comparative to iPhone 4S, Galaxy Nexus II and Droid Razr, except that it falls short in the video recording category at 720 p while others are at 1080 p. We posted a chart from PC World to spell out the technical details for you.

Lumia 800 will launch in some European countries next month and will roll out to Asian countries and Russia by end of the year. Lumia 710 is also expected launch alongside Lumia 800 in Russia and Asia this year. Nokia doesn’t really seem to be going after the US market, since it is not clear when these phones will be available in the US, although the company’s press indicated that it would be releasing a portfolio of products early next year. Nokia also did not say which US carriers would carry the phones. As for the price, Lumia 800 will be available at $549.99 unlocked.

Earlier, we had reported that Microsoft payed $1 Million to Nokia for their partnership. It’s interesting to see how the Android landscape has changed since then, with device manufacturers either paying royalty to competitors or just not being able to sell in countries where they have been sued for patent infringement. Was Nokia’s decision to go with Windows Phone 7 OS (instead of Android) a smart move? Maybe, but in my opinion Miscrosoft got the better end of the deal. Globally, Nokia’s phones are very popular for their hardware and have an established customer base, and now with a better OS in place, Nokia & Microsoft are all set to take over the cell phone market on a big scale.

The leaders in the smart phone battle – Apple and Samsung – have released their latest phones – iPhone 4S and Galaxy S II. The decision factors for buying a smart phone vary from person to person but what is the most important aspect of a smart phone for you? Is it aesthetics, hardware superiority or ease of use? We will try to break it down for you!

1. Aesthetics – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

iPhone 4S has a similar rectangular, glass and aluminium design as that of the iPhone 4. Galaxy S is taller and wider than the iPhone 4S. It also a bit thinner overall, bottom is thicker than the top, which we think might give a better grasp of the phone.

The iPhone has its customary circular home button, present in all its iDevices, for navigation and control. The Galaxy S has the on-screen buttons and does not have any physical buttons. The physical button adds to ease of use while the onscreen buttons need some getting used to. The iPhone 4S comes in black and white while the Galaxy S comes in black and grey.

We think the display on both the devices – Apple’s Retina Display and Samsung’s Super AMOLED are very comparable. Text and images should be as sharp as you hope on both the devices. The height and width dimensions on the Galaxy S II increases the display size, but it does come at the risk of being a wee bit bigger to hold.

2. Innards – Lets strip open the two devices

Memory – iPhone 4S has a 512 MB on board RAM and Galaxy S II has 1 GB RAM. This does not account for your on board storage. The higher RAM would account for better performance, although it depends on the implementation of the OS – Android or iOS. The best way is for you to do a hands on test on both phones and try navigation, running Apps, opening and closing apps, running multiple apps at the same time etc to see which one is optimal for you.

Processor – Galaxy S II has a slightly better processor technically, but performance cannot be defined by this alone. For ex. iPhone 4S did better on browser speeds.

Download speed – Galaxy S II has an added advantage of supporting LTE – the real 4G, but again it depends on if LTE is actually supported in your area. On the iPhone 4S, there have been reports that Verizon and AT&T have better speeds than Sprint. All in all, unless you are watching videos while on 3G/4G (not WiFi), or listening to music, or downloading Apps etc, you shouldn’t worry much about the data speeds. I mostly listen to streaming radio and rarely watch videos on AT&T, and so far I haven’t had any issues.

Storage – Ok, this is something most of the users should be concerned about. iPhone 4S comes with storage space of 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB while Galaxy S II with only 16 GB and 32 GB. Additionally, iPhone 4S comes with free iCloud storage which automatically backs up all your data to the cloud, we haven’t heard about it being available on the Galaxy S II yet.

Battery Life – Both the phones have about 8 hours of talk time.

Camera – iPhone 4S has a 8 MP rear camera with a f 2.4 aperture for high quality images, along with face detection, image stabilization and 1080p video. Galaxy S II has a 5MP camera, supports 1080 p video and comes with panorama support. The iPhone 4 is expected to take quicker photos. I like how the smart phones manufacturers are stepping it up and trampling the camera industry.

3. Features and ease of use

This is something you have to decide by trying out the two phones and their operating systems. The iPhone 4S boasts the new feature rich iOS 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S II boasts Android’s latest software version – Ice Cream sandwich. Take a look at our comparison of the features in both.

On HTC’s introduction of an Android phone that boasted much of the popular features of the iPhone, the book says that Steve called it a “grand theft”

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google’s Internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn’t interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.

“I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”

The biography also hints a new product that Apple may have in the pipeline – an integrated HDTV

“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.'”

He called Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, his “spiritual partner” at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had “more operation power” at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself — that there’s no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is “the way I set it up.”

Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President for Industrial Design, has been at Apple for nearly 20 years and is responsible for the iconic product designs that the company has released.

The biography has been having record pre-orders. If you haven’t yet ordered the best Steve Jobs memorabilia, then do so now 🙂 You can order it here.

HP is not the only company giving up its mobile software business, Nokia recently gave up MeeGo OS and Symbian OS to work closely with Microsoft. And Google acquired Motorola mobility to defend Android from patent trolls. It’s a hard “mobile” world out there! Well, except for Apple! 😛

Update: HP tablets sold out like hotcakes from Amazon to Best Buy! Who knew that a dead tablet can get sold out? Well, at $100, that maybe the cheapest tablet you can get your hands on.

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Apple recently announced iOS 5 -available to customers this Fall. The new release contains over 200 + updates and is available on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4G, iPad, iPad 2 and iPod Touch. Here are the key features:

Notification Center: which is quite similar to Android’s implementation. GoogleChic is fuming over this! 🙂 You can slide down the Notification Center and display all your notifications and access them right away. The new notifications don’t interrupt and they are displayed at the top of the screen when they appear. Also, the lock screen neatly displays all the notifications, and you can just slide on each notification from the lock screen, which is pretty cool.

Newstand: As a fan of eMagazines and Newspapers, I think this is one of the most useful features in this release. It gives a central place for iOS users to access all the ezines and newspapers. It has a shelf screen like iBooks and automatically downloads the latest edition, which is very convenient.

iMessage: provides a new messaging service to all its iOS users. Finally we can save on all those text messaging fees that AT&T and Verizon is ripping us off.

PC free: You can buy a new iDevice and activate and setup it up wirelessly; no more iTunes to set it up. All the Over The Air updates, WiFi syncing and iCloud backup in this release is making me giddy 🙂

Twitter: Apple now gives a system wide integration for Twitter (which is probably the only third party app Apple has integrated with). Once you sign in, you should be able to tweet from any where on the phone. Apple wouldn’t do it unless there was popular demand for this. I can only imagine how many extra tweets this is going to generate.

Safari : The three new Safari features in this release is tabbed browsing, Reader and Reading List. I love the new Safari reader feature. It removes all the ads and distractions while you are reading an article. It basically strips out all the flak and gives you the meat. Reading List lets you bookmark your article, which iCloud syncs to all your iDevices. GoogleChic wont like to hear it but the truth is that Android uses an Apple’s Safari Engine (WebKit) in its browser. So effectively, Safari Engine provides for 90% of mobile phone browsing 🙂

Reminders: Apple’s advanced reminder system, among other things provides location-based reminders which is synced to iCloud and with all your other iDevices.

Camera and Photos: You don’t have to look for the camera App when you want to take a picture. Now you can access it directly from the lock screen and even use the volume up button to take a picture. Apple has also introduced photo editing including red-eye reduction, crop, rotate and enhance along with iCloud syncing to photos.

iOS 5 goes hand in hand with iCloud. So this really is the first step into integrating Apple’s devices into cloud based computing. I can’t wait to see what the next release holds. I bet GoogleChic wants to show off some Android Ice Cream Sandwich features now 🙂

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC

AppleGirl has one thing right, heck yeah I want to brag just a little about Ice Cream Sandwich. Instead of boring y’all with a side by side comparison with iOS 5, and point out how most of the features were inspired by Android :). Let’s explore what Google has to offer with Ice Cream Sandwich; Android 4.0.Ice Cream Sandwich will include all of the features from Honeycomb which is currently only available on tablets. It’ll run across all devices from phones, tablets to laptops. It’s looks like Google is trying to stop fragmentation (at least that’s what AppleGirl claims :)) and building an OS that can run across all devices.

The coolest feature is the ability to utilize the camera to recognize the movement of a user and adjust the display accordingly. Similarly, it uses the camera for the facial recognition software in which it can act as a “virtual camera operator”. Check out the video below to see the demo. Android 4.0 will also contain new APIs that will allow for the UI to adjust depending on available screen space on the device.

Ice Cream Sandwich is schedule to launch in Q4 and it’s rumored to launch on a new device, perhaps the Nexus 4G?

For every Android phone it sells, HTC has agreed to pay $5 to Microsoft over intellectual patent infringement. Although it is not clear on the area of infringement, those close to the company indicate that the infringement broadly applies in areas ranging from the user interface to the underlying operating system. HTC also makes Windows phones but apparenty thats irrelevant.

So there you go, Microsoft has found its way into making some $$ from Android.

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS obviously is far less superior than Android which is why they’re trying to make some $$ off Android 🙂

It seems like everyone is suing each other these days. Apple filed a suit in April claiming that Samsung stole the “look and feel” of the iPhone and iPad.

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Do you dream of iTunes and AirPlay on Android? doubleTwist has just made your life easier by offering support for iTunes sync and AirPlay streaming on Android.doubleTwist App lets you sync your iTunes to your Android phone and stream photos, music and videos to Apple TV and music and videos to DLNA devices.

The doubleTwist Player itself is free, but if you want to use AirPlay there is a price of $4.99 for it, which I’m sure you will gladly pay up after having fought with your DLNA device for months 😉

Albeit, the thing to keep in mind before you jump the gun is that doubleTwist does not support streaming to AirPort Express! doubleTwist brands its Apps as “The Cure for iPhone envy” and “Life without wires”. Aptly so!

The other options are the Twonky Mobile which offers AirPlay and DLNA streaming but no iTunes sync and MediaSync which offers iTunes sync but no AirPlay.

BY THE GOOGLE CHIC

Is doubleTwist really the cure for the iPhone envy? Or rather the solution for people that are trading in their iPhones for an Android? 🙂

I have to say I came across two iPhone fan boys this week that are ready to throw in the towel and move on over to Android. doubleTwist will sure make their transition easier. I’m sure they’ll be happy to know that for $4.99 they can still stream to their Apple TV from their new phones.

doubleTwist also offers NFC MP3 sharing. Just double tap your phones together and your music can be shared either via Bluetooth or WiFi. Hmm, I wonder when the iPhone will be able to do that!